


you clutched my brain and eased my ailing

by thecourageofstars



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Nikita AU, spy AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 17:41:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4929019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecourageofstars/pseuds/thecourageofstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three years after Amanda Waller ordered the murder of her fiance and escaping ARGUS, Felicity comes back onto the radar ready to even the score. Oliver, her former mentor, is tasked with taking her down and is failing spectacularly at it. Nikita AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	you clutched my brain and eased my ailing

**Author's Note:**

> I think its been three years since I last uploaded something on fanfiction? I've got a Star Wars olicity AU that I've been slaving over for the past two months and a bunch of other half written pieces smoldering away on my lap top, but I write this from scratch in two days. Writing is weird. Please, please leave a comment if you could- it has been so long and I'm feeling a little self conscious and very excited to finally upload something! So enjoy, I hope this entertains you as much as it did me when I was writing it. Mistakes are all mine.

Roy fell out of sleep slowly, head heavy, mouth feeling like it was made of cotton. He was on a fairly uncomfortable mattress, but he’d slept on the ground too many times to mind too much. It was more comfortable than the bed he’d been given in prison at least.

  
The robbery had gone badly (or right according to plan from a certain point of view) and he’d had to shoot the bank owner in the process. Per his instructions, he had violently resisted arrest, been subdued, and flung into a jail cell for a two weeks and then… Nothing.

  
Roy cracked open his eyes and winced. The room had dull white furniture with wall of slate grey concrete that smelled faintly of bleach. Weird. His prison cell had been made of iron and smelled of feces and panic. The thought occurred to him that he wasn’t in prison anymore and he shot up. The plan had worked! Although sitting up quickly had been a bad idea; his head throbbed sharply and his stomach rolled.

  
Another thought: he was not alone in the room.

  
A man was there; tall, muscular and dangerous looking, leaning on the wall opposite were Roy sat. For a moment they just stared at each other and Roy sneered.

  
“Fine, I’ll start. Who the fuck are you and where am I?”

  
“I’m Oliver. I work for the government and we have decided to give you a second chance. This is a training facility. Which, incidentally is not in Starling City, but only we know that.”

  
Oliver walked over to the desk by his bed and picked up a file. He opened it and tossed it neatly on the bed.

  
“As of June 13th your death was ruled a suicide by the prison courts. Your ashes are stored,” he pointed to the picture right page of the file, “right in that building.”  
Roy thought Oliver said all this as if it was a well-practiced scrip. How many others had come before him? He felt numb as he touched the thin paper of his death certificate. Also per his instructions: try to escape. ARGUS liked recruits with spunk. Roy flung himself off the bed and tried to juke around Oliver but the older man hardly blinked. Oliver caught Roy’s wrist and twisted it painfully behind him.

  
“Your life is over Roy. Struggle and I snap your wrist. Your choice,” Oliver intoned.

  
Roy slumped back on the bed and glared at the older man.

  
“Why me?” snarled Roy, the effect ruined somewhat by how he cradled his throbbing wrist to his chest.

  
“Because you are a white male with almost no paper trails or family ties. Those are surprisingly hard to come by. Because of this, we have decided to give you a second chance,” he repeated tonelessly.

  
“How?”

  
“Learn; learn how to serve your country instead of just yourself. But you will have to earn it Roy.”

  
Oliver was about to leave, before he stopped and gave Roy a chilling half smile that made his face look haunted.

  
“Welcome to ARGUS.”

.

Three years after Ray’s death, she visits his grave. Three years too many she thought, but the timing couldn’t have been helped.

  
Feeling somewhere between numb and determined, Felicity stared down at Ray’s final resting place. The dark gray head stone was just beginning to show its age, the wind and rain dulling the once gleaming finish and Felicity could see were the moss was starting to climb up the sides.

(five minutes)

_Raymond Palmer, beloved son and devoted friend, May 1984 – June 2013_

  
Kneeling down, Felicity gently lay the engagement ring on the head stone. For two blissful weeks she hadn’t been able to look at her engagement ring without smiling, had become distracted with the way the cluster of diamonds caught the light, so distracted that she had forgotten the truth of what she had become- of what she was. Then she had found him face down on the shower floor, water still pulsing and the blood from his head wound snaking down the drain.

  
And now…

  
Felicity pressed a kiss to the tips of her fingers then placed them on Ray’s head stone where his name had been engraved.

  
(two minutes)

  
The truth, was that Felicity had been smuggled into a mysterious and top secret government program when she was nineteen and agents with engagement rings to ordinary people were a liability. They could have put her on a suicide mission andbeen done with it, but Felicity suspected that her skill set made her too valuable to outright kill. Oliver might have interceded but the thought turned her stomach.

  
Ray however, had been expendable. The moment she walked into their bathroom, a bag of takeout from his favorite Greek restaurant clutched in her hand, she knew how Ray died. Ray was murdered and Felicity had disappeared like smoke into the night sky. She might have failed Ray once, but finally, three years later she was ready.

  
(one minute)

  
“This ends now,” she told the head stone. Closing her eyes and bowing her head, Felicity grieved for her fiancé, dreams of dark haired babies and what could have been. A  
moment later, she was gone with the wind.

.

Approximately 4,567 miles away, Cisco nearly fell out of the mountain of bean bags he had nestled in, knocking his red vines all across the floor in his haste to get up. Racing down a flight of stairs, then speed walking through a maze of identical grey hall ways, he finally made it to Waller’s office.

  
Cisco rapped urgently on the door, trying to catch his breath.

  
There was a pregnant pause as if Waller was annoyed with his very presence. Cisco knocked on the door again, hoping it would convey the seriousness of his announcement, and, if he was being honest, his excitement.

  
The door unlocked with a resigned click.

  
Throwing open the door, Cisco was somewhat disturbed to come face to face with not only Waller, but also Oliver. He had hoped Waller or Sara would be around to break the news to Oliver, rather than him, proudly out of shape and short tech wizard that he was.

  
“It’s Felicity, Ma’am. She’s back on the radar.”

.

Waller just cocked her head and Cisco thought Oliver looked like a lost sailor who had the misfortune to catch Medusa’s eye. It seemed to Cisco that the other man began to calcify as the seconds ticked on. A silent war was being waged between his boss and her top field agent, and urge to slam the door shut and sprint back to his bean bags, red bull and red vines was almost too strong.

  
“Cisco.”

  
Waller’s voice was a horrifying blend of thoughtful and vindictive.

  
“Find Felicity’s location. Oliver will head her cancellation. This will not be an issue I trust?”

  
Oliver had never looked more like a statute.

  
“No,” was his curt reply.

.

USER ONLINE …  
“Barbie, I’m in.”

  
“How’s training?”

  
“Rough, but nothing more difficult than what you taught me. You really caused a ruckus coming back onto the radar. How are things on your end?”

  
“Things are going according to plan. Remember what I taught you?”

  
“Always.”

  
“Be safe Abercrombie.”

  
“Right back at you Barbie.”

  
USER LOGGED OUT…

.

If it hadn’t been obvious three years ago just how skilled Felicity was with computers, her recent display of talent was like a smack in the face with an anvil.

  
“Find her location this instance, Cisco!” grumbled Cisco, in a poor impression of Oliver’s patented growl, distinctly annoyed.

  
“As if I haven’t been trying to do that for three years! But hey, whatever, it’s not like you can’t tell the difference between a terabyte and a megabyte or anything.”  
Cisco yanked at a red vine with his teeth and chewed it angrily. The other minions had long since left to pass out on too thin mattresses, soon to be roused by Sara and shuffle back into the lab, drinking so much coffee that they might as well start sweating the stuff. And when he last checked the surveillance cameras, Oliver was making excellent progress beating the stuffing out of an old punching bag.

  
For a techie, Felicity’s been remarkably successful sabotaging ARGUS’ plans. Obviously she can hack like nobody’s business, but she’s popped up right in the middle of three separate, undocumented ops, destroying everything from a GPS containing the location of enriched uranium material to Oliver’s concentration.

  
“Anything?”

  
Oliver’s voice was gruff and Cisco nearly toppled his red bull all over his key board. He and Caitlin used to have bets going as to how long it would take Felicity to notice Oliver in a room and Oliver seemed to delight in making her freak out, if only because her reactions were so funny. Somehow, Cisco doesn’t think Oliver felt the same way about him. (He tries not to think about how Oliver would bring her coffee without her asking and even lunch if he knew she hadn’t eaten because having to hunt down a woman he still considers a friend is hard enough as it is.)

  
Cisco looked at the other man indignantly and not a little aggravated.

  
“Yeah, I just decided to not tell you for an hour yet because I wanted to increase the suspense- No! Stop-” Cisco said pointing his finger at Oliver’s darkening face, too tired and blood too saturated with red bull to care.

  
“You know who could find Felicity? Felicity.”

  
Oliver just crossed his arms and Cisco had never missed Felicity more. The brooding field agent was stubborn as the day was long. Cisco, Barry and Caitlin could all ask him to do the same thing and he would dig in his heels, but if _Felicity_ asked him to do something he had a curious habit of listening to _her_. Of course if she was here to talk him down, this conversation wouldn’t be happening in the first place.

  
“Bit of a moot point now isn’t it?”

  
“That is the point,” Cisco said, “You need a microchip that can allow you to listen in on corrupt Russian diplomats from a thousand miles away or an invisible Austin Martin? I’m your guy. But this,” he gestured clumsily towards the rows of state of the art computers, “this is all Felicity.” Oliver opened his mouth and closed it abruptly, mouth set in a hard line.

  
There was a sharp rap on the door and one of the new recruits walked in, the one almost pretty enough to be a girl, looking a little off balance.

  
“Uh, Waller wants to see you,” he told Oliver, eyes darting around the room.

  
What was his name, Rob? Cisco decided it didn’t matter. He needed sleep. And a shower, but mostly sleep.

.

The ball room glittered.

  
This was one of the better decorated gala’s Oliver had attended, the room’s walls and high ceilings resplendent in pale gold wall paper and tinted windows that displayed the New York City Skyline in all of its glory. The enormous diamond chandelier hung as the center piece, sending iridescent flutters of light to bounce off every sequin and glass flute sloshing with champagne.

  
Senator Hilbert had pulled out every stop and Waller was here to remind Hilbert and company of just how dangerous she and ARGUS were and that they would do well to listen.  
Oliver lounged against the bar, idly tracing the rim of his glass. All around him older tux clad men charmed and chatted and politely leered at women in shimmering gowns with sharp cheek bones and Crest white-strip smiles: it was miserable. (He’d been miserable for the past three years but that was beside the point.) This gala was everything Ollie would have wanted Waller knew it. But here he was, her muscle for the evening in case anything got out of hand, nothing more than her lap dog, a Chihuahua, when he should have been back at ARGUS searching for Felicity. He seemed to be more than a minute away from red eyed fury these days, with Waller smiling behind the one sided glass.  
There was a flash of blonde hair and it took everything Oliver had not to immediately jerk around to look and he hated it.

  
There was the telltale buzzing in his ear of an incoming call and Oliver tapped his ear piece.

  
“Report.”

  
“Operation Foxtrot was blown, Felicity’s finger prints are all over it and the reporter’s hard drive is missing.”

  
“Rodger that,” Oliver gritted out and called Waller who was still dealing with Hilbert.

  
“Yes?” Waller asked over the earpiece, a hard edge creeping into her voice.

  
“Foxtrot was blown, Felicity’s handy work.”

  
“And you’re still here why?”  
  
Oliver clenched his teeth thinking of an exhausted looking Cisco running on nothing but tenacity and red bull. He took a deep breath and a swig of his whiskey.  
“I’d need to pull other assents from the field to find her. We trained a ghost to be an even better ghost, finding her when she doesn’t want to be found is next to impossible.”

No sooner had the words come out his mouth did Felicity herself appear before him, draped in a shimmering confection of dark gold, her blonde hair artfully curled. Oliver nearly spit out his drink.

  
She smiled and took a glass of champagne from the bar, blue eyes dancing with amusement.

  
The memories came flooding back, knocking him unsteady. Late night ops with just the two of them to keep each other company, her voice in his ear guiding him down long forgotten halls and dusty rooms back to safety, her nails, pained a different shade every week, clacking furiously as she hacked government data bases.  
“I’ll deal.” Oliver said shortly, pleased to find that his voice did not come out strangled. He didn’t take his eyes of her as Felicity made her way to the other end of the ball room, were Oliver knew a door to the stairs was located. Knowing her, she had probably already looped the cameras. (And if his eyes drifted lower than back of her head, well, he wasn’t telling)

  
“If you don’t I will,” Waller said, her malice obvious even out of sight.

  
Yanking the earpiece out of his ear, he downed the last of his whiskey and made his way across the ball room and slipped into the stairwell where Felicity stood waiting.

  
“How did you get in here?”

  
“Through the front door. Just like you,” Felicity said, sending him a small smile.

  
When was the last time he saw her smile? He knew precisely the last time she smiled at him though. Operation Camelot had been such a wild success for ARGUS and such a disaster for their relationship- Waller should have known better than to have them pose as a married couple, but then again, maybe she did. Relationships were a liability in the espionage business, and brilliant blonde hackers were never meant to love grim reapers.

  
Felicity looked perfect. In this light her dress seemed to be made of liquid metal making her clear blue eyes more intense. For a moment, he felt a pang of anguish for the way things had been before Operation Camelot, before she had been so foolish to have fallen in love with a cover.

  
“Why are you here? You were out; you were free. And why now? Three years is a long time to do nothing.”

  
Felicity looked at him calmly, achieving an effect far more regal than Waller had ever managed.

  
“I haven’t been doing nothing. And why am I back? Oliver,” Three years later and she could still get under him skin by just saying his name, “Waller had my fiancé killed.”  
“He was supposed to be your cover, it wasn’t supposed to be real,” Oliver said brusquely, and immediately regretted it.

  
“Just like Camelot right?” she told him coldly, “Just like you?”

  
He deserved that. He deserved every arsenic riddled barb she could throw at him and he would take it willingly. Deal with it or I will. For a moment he just looked at her. The glasses are gone. That beautiful gold dress had a more plunging neckline than she would have worn three years ago and her hair is shorter than he had remembered. Her mouth however, is painted in her signature dark fuchsia and maybe, Oliver thought, he still knew this woman.

  
“Oh, Felicity.” He hasn’t said her name aloud in three long, miserable years.

  
_(don’t make me be your downfall)_

  
“I had hoped I wouldn’t see you again,” he told her abruptly, “I’d hoped,” he said with his head bowed in earnest, “that you were happy. Somewhere. Probably on a beach sipping mojitos- watching Netfilx if I know you,” he finished with a small smile.

  
“Oliver,” she said softly.

  
“I didn’t know, you know, about your fiancé,” he said, not liking the way the word fiancé fell off his tongue.

  
“I only found out that he was dead when no one could find you. Waller was livid. And,” the words stick in his throat but Oliver forced them out “I’m sorry. I’m sorry she took that from you.”

  
When he met her eyes, they were filled with something he could never let himself name. She took a step towards him and let her hand rest against his unshaven cheek. Oh, fuck it Oliver thought, and brought his hand up to cover hers, pressing a kiss to her wrist. Felicity’s breath seemed to catch and Oliver’s heart stuttered in his chest.

  
“I can’t protect you if you come after Waller. She’s got all the rotten senators in that ball room under her thumb and she won’t be afraid to take the innocent down with her.”

  
“I know. She still needs to be stopped,” she told him plainly, and Oliver could see her eyes becoming glassy with tears. He hated it. He always hated it.

  
Oliver knew that Felicity was going to kiss his cheek and maybe he had more whiskey than he thought but he turned his face to kiss her without any real conscious thought to do so. He doesn’t mean to let one arm snake around her waist to crush her against his chest, nor does he mean to hopelessly tangle his other hand in her hair, but he does. Felicity lets out a sigh against his lips and Oliver relishes the feeling of her arching against him, hands carded in the hair at the nape of his neck. Oliver let one of his hands drift down her backside and swallowed Felicity’s gasp with a dark kiss.

  
From within the ballroom there was a loud burst of laughter and they pulled apart, but Oliver kept his hands pressed firmly into the small of her back, their foreheads still connected, breathing hard.

  
“Join me,” Felicity pleaded softly, blue eyes imploring. “Working for ARGUS has been eating at you like an acid.”

  
There is one very big reason he will not be able to leave ARGUS, and she knows it, but Felicity is doing a damn good job convincing him otherwise.

  
“I’m a computer genius, I can find who killed your family. We’ll find another way.”

  
“You don’t have Waller’s resources and you know it. I can’t leave,” he told her, almost resigned as he pushed a curl behind her ear.

  
“Not yet,” she amended.

  
“Felicity-“he began, but she cut him off with a chaste, if lingering, kiss.

  
“Goodnight Oliver,” she said with a smile that was a little sad, but a little hopeful too. She used her thumb to wipe away any traces of her lipstick before pulling away. Oliver let her go reluctantly, letting their hands catch before she made it to the stairwell, feeling as if part of himself was running away into the great unknown.

  
He sighed and rubbed at eyes. He was as wrapped around her finger as he had been three years ago. Taking a deep breath, he fished his earpiece out of his pocket and reconnected it.

  
“What’s the status?”

.

Felicity watched from the shadows as Oliver made his way from the building into a large black sedan.

  
She had forgotten. Or perhaps just needed to be reminded how much she had felt for Oliver in the thick of her days working at ARGUS. Even back then Oliver made her feel things she was never meant to feel for anyone by Ray. Had they been anywhere more private, there kiss might have progressed to something much more than kissing. She had loved Ray, but if Oliver had chosen her instead of Waller after that blasted operation Camelot, she wouldn’t have looked at another man twice.

  
Oliver was handsome as ever, a permanent five o’ clock shadow and blue eyes intense as they had been when she had first met him in the Lab. The way he had looked at her tonight, as if she was the most beautiful woman in the world and he was just taking her in, made liquid heat pool in her belly.

  
He couldn’t leave ARGUS yet. But she thought of the way his mouth had been nothing but slick heat against hers and the way his hands had flexed against the small of her back in an effort not to pull her closer and thought that maybe he would be ready soon.

  
For the first time since Roy had aggressively campaigned to join her on her mission, Felicity felt a powerful sense of hope rise up in her chest that maybe, just maybe, she wouldn’t have to do this alone.

.

.

.

“He won’t do it.”

  
“Won’t do what?” Waller asked Isabel.

  
“He won’t be able to kill her. You’ve seen him, he’s been panting after her since she was a recruit.”

  
“Yes, I know,” Waller said with a drawl. She took a sip of her scotch and leaned back in her chair, content.

  
Isabel was a marvelously vain creature. Waller knew for a fact that the thick strand of rubies around her neck had once belonged to a Russian princess and her couture dress rippled around her like black oil as she paced across the room. Waller liked vain: vain was predictable.

  
“And? She’s doing a very good job of mucking my plans,” Isabel snapped.

  
“Ms. Rochev, I don’t think you’re seeing the whole picture. Perhaps your own jealously is clouding your vision,” Waller said, smirking and Isobel scowled, “but Felicity is just as besotted with Oliver as he is with her. I admit, I made a miscalculation with operation Camelot- I should have just let them become attached, it would have made everything much easier- but what’s done is done We are in the present.”

  
Isobel looked distinctly unimpressed.

  
“Do elaborate,” the haughty Russian sneered, but Waller just smiled, amused.

  
“Cisco won’t be able to find Felicity because she won’t let him. Oliver however… It’s only a matter of time till he leads us strait to her,” Waller said as she turned to the numerous security panels to watch Oliver follow a familiar blonde across the ballroom floor.

.  
.  
.

**Author's Note:**

> ( I'm hammertimeallthetime on Tumblr if anyone is interested. I'm also looking to take some prompts if anyone is willing to give them. Come say hello!)


End file.
